Titanic the movie
20 Unanswered Questions
So, you've been to see the movie that, according to the publicity blurb, is the one that everyone's talking about. Always reluctant to join in with a fashionable trend without being contrarian, I'm going to restrict my comments to 20 unanswered questions, initially posed by Neil Norman in the Express And Star on Wednesday February 4, 1998. You can read my battle against the hype in list posts elsewhere.
- Why does Rose throw one of the most spectacular diamonds in the world straight into the sea at the end of the film, over 85 years after she got it from her mess of a fiance? How come she hasn't even shown it to the treasure hunters who have been on the trail of the ship?
- Given that you're spending $200 million on a movie, won't that run to a half-decent artist to draw the nude sketch of the young Rose, instead of the amateurish portrait we see in the film?
- It is highly unlikely that a steerage passenger would ever have been invited to dine in first class, even if they had saved an aristo's life. It's also highly unlikely that Jack would have been able to stroll around the upper decks in such freedom.
- Amongst the paintings seen in the de Witt Bukater suite are Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Monet's Water Lillies. Are we to believe that the very same paintings now hanging on the walls of museums are fakes?
- After spending so much time heaving herself and her soaking gown through freezing water to rescue her beloved, how come Rose doesn't expire of hypothermia?
- Did the wealthy - without exception, depicted as hideous, selfish, greedy cowards - really behave that badly? Or the poor - exclusively joyful, warm-hearted, humane and great dancers - as well as all that?
- How come the steerage passengers seem to have a better time of it than the nobs? The all-singing, all-dancing, hoi-polloi compare suspiciously well with the dullards up top whose conversation fails to extend past economics and politics.
- Would a First Officer shoot one of the steerage passengers then turn the gun on himself? Not according to the nephew of First Officer William Murdoch, who is furious at the slur on his uncle's memory. Eyewitnesses report that Murdoch behaved heroically before being washed overboard.
- Why did director James Cameron ignore details of the other vessels nearby and there responses? It's a matter of record that they mistook the Titanic's distress flares for a fireworks party.
- An utterly preposterous notion: the boat only bumped into the iceberg because the two men on watch were distracted by Rose and Jack's snoggage.
- Would Bruce Ismay, the chief of the White Star Line, and a man of considerable education, really be in such ignorance of Sigmund Freud that he would pompously demand to know if he were a passenger?
- Picture the scene. Jack is up to his waist in freezing water, manacled to a pipe, watching a girl swing an axe that is as likely to decapitate him as it is to free him. And he has the strength to crack a (poor) joke.
- When a ship goes down, there is a whirlpool. The bigger the ship, the bigger the whirlpool. The one the Titanic created sucked down everything for some hundreds of yards around it. So how do Jack and Rose jump off the stern as the ship is already at the vertical, and simply bob to the surface?
- So, you're going to take all your clothes off and pose on a couch for your wannabe lover. Isn't it wise to lock the cabin door first?
- The gesture used by Rose to her pursuer is a middle finger extended upwards. This was not commonly used in Britain until the 1960s, and would certainly not have been used by a lady of breeding in 1912.
- Would a crazed and jilted fiance, no matter how rich, have been allowed to run through a sinking ship firing at the scenery without some form of restraint? This is the child of Victorian melodrama and American shoot-em-ups.
- Why would the lovers run right through every part of a giant ship until they find the one car on board to umm in? Oh, because it's a stereotypical American tradition...
- Tom Wolfe created the phrase "Masters of the Universe" in the 1950s to describe the rich and powerful. Except it was in use around the 1912 dinner table.
- Of the four funnels on the Titanic, only three gave any exhaust gases. The fourth was an air vent pretending to be a funnel. So how come Cameron's massive budget and research failed to establish this basic fact?
- And finally. On a ship carrying 3000 passengers, with a labyrinth of corridors, gangways and walkways, how come the couple only bump into people they know?
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This page updated Feb 14, 1998
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